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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Our container house

For a few years now, Sunshine and I have been researching shipping container houses as an alternative means to shelter. Most container houses modify the container and set them into a larger structure and permanent position. To our mind, such designs loose the true value of a container - its portability. Without portability, a container house has very little added value over a standard pre fabricated house. The cost works out almost the same, as a standard 20 foot reconditioned container costs around $3000 in Australia. Our design retains the portability, with all external elements fitting either inside a container, or on top, ready for transport.

The reason we want a portable home is so we can relocate once. Our plan is a two stage approach to home and land ownership, attempting to keep our weekly payments as low as possible.

Most people in Australia either stay in debilitating rental situations averaging $400 per week (our's is $500), or cripple themselves with a 30-40 year mortgage, carrying average weekly repayments of $600, or much more if interest rates spike.

We aim to find a vacant block of land and offer the owner 50-$100 rent per week. We'd then secure a personal loan of 30-$40 000 for the prefabrication, additions and delivery of the container house. The weekly repayments on such a loan would be around $300 for 3-5 years. The land rent and house repayments would total $400 per week. We'd save that towards a deposit for our own land, and once the containers are paid off, we'd move them onto the new block and settle them permanently, hence the need for once only portability. Our repayments would then reduce to around $300 per week for 30 years, leaving us money for extras. This plan gets us out of the rental trap, where it is impossible to save anything towards a mortgage, and keeps our living expenses as low as possible in this inflated and exclusive Australian economy.